"By no means the worst rat-run in the area"
The Grovelands Road resident who obtained the data described it as "staggering". Clare Rogers of Better Streets for Enfield commented:
"This data presents a picture of a street that is hostile to walking, cycling and residents' well-being. Speeding aside, the sheer volume of 1,300 vehicles a day prevents this from being a truly healthy neighbourhood street, where any age can walk or cycle and people tend to stroll in the middle of the road: that transformation happens at around 300 vehicles a day. And we know that Grovelands Road is by no means the worst rat-run in the area."
A "safe" speed, but only for some...
The Vpp85 data in the table (the 85th percentile) is used by traffic engineers to assess the speed which feels appropriate for most drivers when traffic is flowing freely. The speed that feels safe to drivers will depend on factors such as road width, how straight the road is, how far they can see etc. In this case Vpp85 was below the speed limit (but only just).
But drivers are judging safety in terms of the risk to occupants of cars, in particular themselves, and the occupants of a large car or SUV travelling at 30mph would be pretty safe driving along Grovelands Road. The risk to people in the category referred to as "vulnerable road users" is, however, very high at 30mph. A pedestrian - such as a child unexpectedly emerging from behind a parked car, or a cyclist knocked off their bike - is highly likely to be seriously injured or killed if hit by a car going at 30mph. If speed limits in urban areas are set at 20mph - as is increasingly common, but not in Enfield - the chances of surviving with minor injuries is high.
So, given that the primary function of roads like Grovelands is to provide access to people living there, it is irresponsible for the Council to set the speed limit at 30mph. A much more appropriate limit would be 20mph, if necessary backed up by measures which would cause drivers to go more slowly - speed humps, road narrowing, obstacles like planters (but at intervals along a long straight road, not just at either end).
So what about the "quieter neighbourhood"?
The December traffic counts were carried out to provide baseline data so that the council can do a proper "before and after" assessment of the effectiveness of their "quieter neighbourhood" measures. So far these merely consist of planters placed at the ends of some streets, including Grovelands, which are supposedly intended to deter through drivers, but the signs rather paradoxically "welcome" them to "our street".
Unlike the thousands of cars that drive through the Lakes Estate every day, the rollout of the quieter neighbourhood measures has been very slow and, anecdotally at least, they have had little or no effect on traffic volumes or speed. Hopefully, similar baseline data gathered at ten further locations will soon be released. It will almost certainly show that the "neighbourhood" is anything but quiet (higher speeds create exponentially more noise) and, with so much traffic, not really conducive to neighbourliness. High time for a serious attempt to tame the rat-runners.
